A Diary from Dixie

Mary Boykin Chesnut kept a journal through the Civil War from a seat unusually close to Confederate leadership. Her husband was a South Carolina senator who resigned to help draft secession and then served as an aide to Jefferson Davis, so she watched Fort Sumter shelled from a rooftop and took tea with the men running the war. What survives is gossip, dread, and very sharp observation: the vanity of officers, the wives waiting on casualty lists, and the slow collapse of a society she belonged to and quietly doubted, slavery above all. She reworked the entries in later life, and they appeared in print after her death. It is the finest firsthand account of the Confederate home front. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.